The Entangled (and Sometimes Violent) Web of Lamist Politics
The tune of the flute changed to the song of the arrow.
--The Fifth Dalai Lama, reluctantly acceding to using Mongolian Troops
Chief avenger and punisher of those who were inimical to
the cause of Buddhism and the public peace.
--Description of Bhutan's Dharma Raja, the Shabdrung
After over a year's delay President Obama finally met with the Dalai Lama last week, and next month we will acknowledge the second anniversary of the killing of up to 70 monks and civilians and the jailing of thousands more Tibetan protesters. For these occasions I would like to share some of my research on the relation between Tibetan Buddhism and religious violence.
History demonstrates that there have been very few examples of nonviolent rule by religious leaders. Given the ethical tenets of the major religions one would expect higher levels of conduct on their part. The millions who rightly admire the current Dalai Lama would offer him as a glowing exception, and he is indeed a saint of nonviolence equal to Mahatma Gandhi. When the young Dalai Lama met Gandhi, he remarked afterwards: "I felt I was in the presence of a noble soul . . . a true disciple of Lord Buddha and a true believer in peace and harmony among all men." If he could have lived to see the remarkable accomplishments of the Dalai Lama, I'm sure that Gandhi would have returned the favor.
In my book The Virtue of Non-Violence: from Gautama to Gandhi I give Gandhi's ethics of nonviolence a Buddhist interpretation, and I also criticize Gandhi's thought where I think he has gone wrong philosophically. Given what I have learned about Gandhi's personality, I'm certain that he would have received my criticism with openness and charity, and I hope that my reservations about some of the Dalai Lama's theological views are taken in the same way.
Many would make the assumption that Tibetan Buddhism has always produced saintly lamas who have followed the ethics of the Buddha. Sadly, this is not the case. Historian Hugh Richardson comments that the "rivalry and bitter fighting" among the monasteries "is a blot on the Tibetan Middle Ages." Each of the monasteries had a "private army commanded often by a reliable family member of the original religious founder." The general justification for this use of violence was same that some Christians and Muslims use: it is God's will as found in prophetic oracles and religious texts.
Buddhist rule has always been more successful under civilian rather than religious rule. Many of the Buddhist kings in India, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Bhutan were exemplary for their peaceful and enlightened leadership. It is supremely ironic that the most religiously tolerant rulers of Hindu India were the Buddhist Ashoka the Great and the Muslim Akbar the Great, and the best kings that Buddhists of Sri Lanka ever had were their Hindu kings from 1739 to 1815.
During a 3-week tour of Tibet and Bhutan in 1999, I learned that the Bhutanese had bravely defended themselves against nine Tibetan invasions in the 17th Century. The Bhutanese were followers of the Tantric Red Hat school of Tibetan Buddhism, and the Tibetans were committed to extending the rule of the Yellow Hat sect. The first three invasions, however, were due to infighting among the Red Hats.
My gracious Bhutanese hosts allowed me to assume that they were always the victims of religiously motivated violence, but my research has revealed that their most famous lama, Ngawang Namgyal, known simply as the Shabdrung, was ruthless in rooting out religious and political opposition to his absolute rule. He consulted both prophetic oracles and Buddhist scriptures to justify his actions.
In a famous 16-point proclamation the Shabdrung declared: "I am the incarnation prophesied by the patriarchs. I am the executioner of false incarnations." The Shabdrung had sought refuge in Bhutan after a dispute arose about his right to be the incarnation of the Bodhisattva Chenrizi (Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit). All the Dalai Lamas claim that they are also the incarnation of Chenrizi, so unfortunately we are confronted with something very familiar: armies appealing to the same deity for victory in war.
The Bodhisattva ideal is one of the greatest moral and spiritual achievements of Mahayana Buddhism. These enlightened Buddhas, beneficent laypeople in many instances, have exhausted their karmic debt, but nevertheless they chose to reenter the cycle of birth and death until all sentient beings are redeemed. Early Bodhisattvas such as the amazing Vimalakirti did perform miracles, but he did not have grand plans for the destiny of a country as Chenrizi does for Tibet. Bodhisattvas generally do not select their next incarnation with the purpose of extending their lives, particularly not as political rulers.
Bodhisattvas are like the Abrahamic deity that they are persons with wills and emotional/mental lives, and they also have a transcendent existence apart from time and space. (This belief applies to most Mahayana schools of which Tibetan Buddhism is a part.) Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are significantly different from the Abrahamic God in that they are not creators of the cosmos (which is eternal) nor are they omnipotent. This may be the reason why the Dalai Lama, in his conversations with Thomas Laird in The Story of Tibet, says that Chenrizi’s plans for Tibet have failed on several occasions. The denial of omnipotence makes way, as it does in Christian "process" theology, for human free-will and responsibility, but the mechanics of this divine-human interaction are pretty much inscrutable in all the Mahayana works that I have read.
In the Pali scriptures (the Mahayana writings are in Sanskrit), Gautama Buddha calls himself a Bodhisattva in each of his previous lives, but uses the term Buddha to describe his last life as Prince Siddhartha. He describes these earlier lives as “when I was not fully awakened and still a Bodhisattva, being myself liable to birth” (Majjhima Nikaya 1.163.4). Although legends indicate that he knew he was a Buddha at birth, Gautama did not actually confirm this until his enlightenment at the age of 45.
The implications here are rather momentous and most ironic: for Gautama Buddha the earlier Bodhisattvas, even though they are benevolent in every instance, are lesser beings because they are subject to rebirth. For Mahayana Buddhists, however, their Bodhisattvas are greater than Gautama, because they refused to enter Nirvana, which Gautama did, but choose to return to the world again and again until all beings are liberated.
An outside observer could say that this makes Gautama Buddha a rather selfish saint, but an insider could counter that the law of karma, over which the Buddha has no control, dictates that there can be no rebirth or any continued existence if a being has no karmic debt. In a longer version of this essay, I argue that the Mahayana Bodhisattva doctrine may very well undermine the law of karma. In that paper I also argue, just as I did in my book on Gandhi, that a Buddhist ethics of nonviolence is better served by the more robust view of the self that is found in the Pali writings. If the self and its suffering are ultimately illusory, as many Mahayana and Hindu philosophies claim, then there is no intelligible basis for personal agency or human rights.
Tibetan Buddhists believes that Chenrizi, starting with a monkey incarnation, has guided the people of Tibet throughout all of its fabulous prehistory and history. The Tibetan kings of prehistory were chosen according to procedures that appear to have an ancient Central Asian provenance. It is King Songzen Gampo (AD 605-49) for which we have the first good evidence, and he was held to be an incarnation of Chenrizi. There does not seem to be a break in Chenrizi's guidance, so that means that Chenrizi is there for the reign of the anti-Buddhist king Langdharma as well as all the other less distinguished Tibetan rulers and lamas.
In his conversations with Laird, the Dalai Lama confirms the traditional view that Chenrizi has a "master plan," and that he has chosen the Tibetan people to have a key role in that plan. (Those who object to my using the phrase "divine will" have to deal with the fact that plans and wills are inextricably linked.) The odd feature of this divine plan is that it has not been fulfilled on a number of key occasions, including the entire lives of the 6th through 12th Dalai Lamas. The failure of the 13th Dalai Lama's efforts to modernize Tibet also went against Chenrizi's plan. Again this may be due to human failure and not the less than omnipotent Chenrizi.
Starting with the Third Dalai Lama (1543-1588), the Yellow Hat sect forged an alliance with Mongolia. Altan Khan declared that all his people had to join the Yellow Hat sect on pain of death, and his troops played a central role in subduing and marginalizing the Red Hat sects. As a result the Yellow Hat sect has dominated Tibetan politics and religion for the last 300 years.
To his credit the Fifth Dalai Lama, sometimes called "The Great Fifth" for his many achievements (including the construction of the 13-storey Potala Palace), confessed that he was not the right reincarnated child, and he reluctantly acceded to the use of military force that his advisors proposed. The Great Fifth actually practiced the sexual yoga of the Red Hat School and he was tolerant of all the Buddhist schools, even the indigenous Bon religion.
Tsangyang Gyatso, the Sixth Dalai Lama, was, to say the least, a controversial figure. He drank and made love to men and women to great excess, and, in a great act of defiance, he renounced his monastic vows. In response, the Manchu and Mongol leaders found another young man whom they claimed was the true Sixth, and Tsangyang Gyatso died mysteriously on his way to China.
The ultimate failure of reincarnation politics is clearly seen in the current situation. In 1989 came the death of the 10th Panchen Lama, considered second only to the Dalai Lama in spiritual significance. Considered a collaborator by most Tibetans, the 10th Panchen Lama was imprisoned for 13 years because the Chinese perceived that he was insufficiently loyal to the Communist cause. Just before his untimely (and some say suspicious death), he was speaking out against the government.
The current Dalai Lama commenced the traditional proceedings to find the correct child incarnation for the 11th Panchen Lama. When the selection was announced on May 14, 1995, the Beijing government arrested the young boy and placed him and his family under house arrest. The abbot who conducted the search was imprisoned for seven years and he is still under house arrest.
Using a selection procedure by which previous Chinese rulers had certified not only the 10th Panchen Lama, but also the 10th, 11th, 12th, and the 14th Dalai Lamas, the Communist government presented, on November 19, 1995, the young Gyeltsen Norbu as the true 11th Panchen Lama. His parents had of course been vetted by the Chinese Communist Party. In March of 2010 the Beijing government announced that their Panchen Lama, now 20 years old, is now among the 13 new members of the powerful National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
It is therefore inevitable that upon the death of Dalai Lama, the Communists will ask Gyeltsen Norbu, as it is the Panchen Lama's duty, to search for and choose the new Dalai Lama. The Tibetans in exile will no doubt find their own child as the true heir of the Yellow Hats, and unfortunately the controversy will drag on indefinitely.
In 1907 the British convinced the Bhutanese to set up a royal line to solve similar disputes in their reincarnation politics. (With DNA testing now available a true prince can always be correctly identified.) The Bhutanese kings of the 20th Century have proved to be some of the most enlightened royalty in Asia. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck became world famous for his motto "Gross National Happiness." His green campaign has stopped forest products exports to India, banned motorcycle taxis, and eliminated plastic bags. The Bhutanese have enjoyed free education and health care for decades.
In 1934 Tibetan authorities blinded a well-meaning lama, who took four students to Europe and worked hard to modernize the country. In stark contrast, King Wangchuck sent his son to Harvard (he is now king), and he made English the language of instruction in all schools. Because they loved their kings so much, the Bhutanese very reluctantly voted in their first parliamentary elections in 2008.
The Dalai Lama says that if he returns to Tibet he will step down as head of state and continue his life as a "simple monk." He also says that Chenrizi might choose a person in another country for his next reincarnation. Does that mean that Chenrizi has given up on Tibet as the nation best suited for the rule of reincarnated lamas? Even if so, what is to prevent the Beijing government from claiming that Chenrizi is embodied in its choice for Dalai Lama? It can claim a 290-year-old Chinese tradition of certifying a new Dalai Lama.
If Chenrizi does choose a different country, where is there a nation that would embrace that idea of a young Buddhist ruler? The only other majority Tibetan Buddhist areas are Ladakh and Sikkim and they are now part of India. Perhaps the Shabdrung was correct in claiming that Chenrizi had chosen him and Bhutan as the legitimate place of divine sovereignty.
In conversations with Thomas Laird, the Dalai Lama speculated that it was Chenrizi's plan that the Great Fifth's reincarnated successor be a king rather than a lama. By renouncing his vows, the Sixth Dalai Lama actually made this possible. This would have put an end to the impractical and unwise practice of choosing young children to rule a country.
With regard to the idea of a hereditary king for Tibet, why did Chenrizi choose such a poor candidate, and why did this divine plan fail? And why does the Dalai Lama imply that that we would not have had the great benefit of his compassionate and charismatic leadership? Even more questions can be raised about the implications for basic Buddhist philosophy, and the relationship of this great Bodhisattva to the Tibetan people and the rest of the world.